Editorial: Guarantee on tuition worth pursing

At the same time that New Mexico State University regents voted to increase tuition Monday, they also agreed to work toward a system that would give future students more certainty as to what their costs would be.

Regent Kari Mitchell pushed through an amendment asking the university to work over the next year toward the creation of a four-year guaranteed tuition program. The idea would provide certainty to incoming freshmen, and would give students a greater incentive to complete their degrees in four years.

Mitchell also proposed changing the university's performance indicators from a six-year graduation model to a four-year model. NMSU has made the four-year graduation timeline a priority in an effort to reduce student debt among its graduates.

The increase approved Monday will hike tuition by 3 percent, or $72 per semester for an in-state undergraduate student carrying 12 credit hours. It was approved on a 4-1 vote, with Chairman Mike Cheney casting the lone dissenting vote. Cheney said he was concerned that the university was not following its "Vision 2020" goals.

The tuition increase will help pay for the final phase of a three-year plan to bring faculty salaries to market equity. It will also boost a fund for first-year student advisers, a student success program and beef up marketing efforts, which university President Garrey Carruthers said are critical to increasing enrollment.

Regents also approved an increase in meal plans, but left student housing rates the same. They OK'd an increase in parking, but only for faculty and staff.

Carruthers said that because of lower enrollment, the university will look to cut $9.1 million in spending, with $7.2 million of that coming from the Las Cruces campus. The university instituted a hiring freeze last month. The cuts come from a total budget of about $272 million.

"We're looking to 'right-size' the system," Carruthers told the regents.

It can be a difficult balancing act. The university needs to be able to compete in a national market for faculty, while working to keep costs as low as possible for students. In the past, the state lottery scholarship was able to pay full costs for most in-state high school graduates. But proceeds from the lottery have not kept up with the increasing costs of attending college.

ASNMSU President Wesley Jackson said that while the tuition increase this year may be difficult, the proposal for a guaranteed tuition rate in the future was encouraging.

"I think we made some improvements today," Jackson said. "To have an item around this time next year to discuss a four-year flat tuition rate is important."